Mira Simonton-Chao is an artist, educator, and organizer based between Chicago, IL and Ann Arbor, MI. Their current research and artistic practice focuses on institutional violence, epistemicide, weaponized data, and archives through an anti-colonial and anti-imperial framework.

Their work against the archive has led to a practice of counter surveillance that examines the politics of place, sight, and scarcity, in which found material is used as a means of imagining abundance in the face of widespread dispossession. Through the pursuit of alternative modes of documentation and cultural preservation in collaboration marginalized and oppressed communities, they seek forms and means of memory work that do not rely on imperial and colonial tools of capture and subjugation and instead rehearse collective liberation. Their work is highly informed by the resilience of organizing movements for abolition, self-determination, and liberation in Chicago, SE Michigan, and the broader Midwest.

Mira is currently pursuing their Master of Art’s in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has a BA from the University of Michigan where they studied Ethnic Studies, Art History, and Ceramics.

They currently work with the following organizations: Groundcover News, the Patric McCoy Legacy Project, and Walls Turned Sideways.